Coming to the PTR in the near future will be a new designation of item type in Normal and Heroic raids for non-tier pieces. Each 5.2 raid boss will have a chance of dropping this new designation of a particular item that’s 6 item levels higher than their counterparts. These higher quality versions will be called “Thunderforged”. This means that there will be five variations of some items. You’ll now see a 5.2 raid item of LFR quality at item level 502, the same item in Normal quality at item level 522, the item in Normal Thunderforged quality at item level 528, the Heroic version of the item at level 535, and the Heroic Thunderforged version of the item at level 541.

This new item designation is being added for a couple reasons, but first and foremost to make loot drops more interesting overall, especially after you have earlier bosses in Throne of Thunder on farm. As you’re working on progression, those first few bosses can now continue to provide a chance at upgrades, making repeated kills potentially more exciting and rewarding. Those additional upgrades can then help to slowly raise power, and boost you over whatever progression roadblock you may hit.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback regarding 25-player raids, and have been looking for ways to address some concerns. Ever since we changed 10-player raids to drop the same item level as 25s, we’ve seen a steady decline in 25-player raiding. This isn’t surprising. A 25-player raid takes an extra level of logistical commitment for the officers of those groups. It’s unfortunately easy for a 25-player guild to collapse down into a 10-player guild, but very unlikely for the opposite to happen. However, we like 25-player raiding and don’t want to see it go away. Like many players, we love the epic feeling that comes with banding together more massive groups to battle powerful foes, we love that there’s opportunity for those groups to try out new players or unusual comps without causing a huge burden, and we want to support the larger raiding guilds. That said, we’re also concerned that over-rewarding the 25-player guilds—if, for example, we went back to a higher item level across the board for 25s, as was the case for Icecrown Citadel—would feel like a slap in the face to the many 10-player raiders out there, who are the majority of our Normal and Heroic raiders.

To attempt to navigate this minefield, we’re going to try having Thunderforged items drop more frequently in 25-player raids. They’ll be somewhat rare in both cases compared to the standard versions that’ll drop, but they’ll be even rarer in 10s. Overall, a 25-player group will be more likely to end up with a slightly higher item level after several weeks of raiding.

It’s important to keep in mind that this only affects 10- and 25-player Normal and Heroic raids, and tier-15 armor pieces won’t be available in Thunderforged quality at all. We’re curious to hear your thoughts about these changes, and what you think once you begin seeing them on the PTR.

You must be stupid. Stone guards means you have 1 less ability to deal with, less damage going out, and makes juggling the energy meters on the dogs much more simple. In heroic it's even easier, hell you get a 1/4 chance to dodge a mechanic that is annoying to deal with since jade is just ae raid damage
Garalon is much easier on 10m, the damage requirement is much lower and theirs less raid damage, on top of the kiting situation being much easier.
Ambershaper This is fight is probably the same on 10 and 25, constructs are the same, monstrosity has less life so stacking the debuff is easier, also explosions mean less people to top off.
Shekzeer. Only 1 person gets visions in 10man, I don't see how that makes it harder, with only one person to dispel, losing people being feared out is not that big of an issue. Also ads don't even need to be prisoned because of their low total health, they can actually be tanked next to shekzeer since there is only one ad phase.
Protectors is not harder, its on par for elite and normal. The only real qustionable fight would be tsulong, and thats solely on the day phase where ad management and assignments require raiders to rotate more.

Only one person gets visions of demise in 10m? Yea you definitely know what you are talking about.

What a crock. So now 25 man raids not only drop more loot PER PERSON in the raid, but also drop more extra special loot PER PERSON...all because the officers have to do a little more work.

Having lead a 40 man, 25 man and 10 man raiding guilds I feel this is a totally wrong headed way to try to fix an imaginary problem. If you want a solution, Blizzard, then have one raid size of 15 players. It would be the least disruptive thing you have done to raiding in the past two expansions.

Try leading a 25man progression raid on a dead realm, and then come to me. Even in the worst of times you can cobble together 10 people, but on dead server, where realm forum activity in the last month has been nothing more than bump posts to recruitment threads of 2 raiding guilds one bieng 25m and the other being 10m that disbanded a week earlier, and you'd change your tune. Back in WOTLK and CATA we could keep our standard were they have been since the beginning of BC but now we've lowered our standards just so we can get back ups and fill the raid properly even with an 80% attendance requirement.

It'd be nice if they'd take some responsibility. After all they are the ones who made this change and saw an "unsurprising" decline in 25 man raids. Where do they get off talking about it like they weren't involved?

upgrades were not RELEVEANT in progression kills. Holy shit, why are you 10mans so bitchy, not only are all fights tuned for 10man, you still have to whine and moan about 25mans being more difficult. Seriously since everything is unique equipped I don't see how your states is really any more relevant to the dps check that was garalon. Not to mention the top tier dps need to carry on garalon (rogues and warriors) up till then had shit optimized gear, well rogues are a different story but at least for warriors, with out proper trinkets this tier carrying was much harder/ is harder.

Im not saying one is harder than the other. I think both are almost the same some harder on 10 some on 25 man. But what i said about the upgrade system is true and now 25 man gets upgraded gear (thunderforged gear is upgraded normal/heroic gear ) more faster than 10 man meaning that 25 man will get higher ilvl then 10 man. Assuming both are almost equal in difficulty and hc ist tuned for non-thunderforged gear i feel betrayed that 25 man is getting "nerfed" once 5.2 comes out.

Yeah, my first thought was "Our poor, poor DKP system." We already have a bad time dealing with 489 vs 496 vs 502 vs 509. We have our raid members pay for each item slot once, per difficulty. So if I get a 489 helm out of MV and pay DKP for it, then I can get a 496 helm out of HoF for "free" assuming there isn't someone else paying for it. So yeah, this can lead to people "holding out" and not taking upgrades because the want first-shot at that 496 "real upgrade" and not the interim piece.

Now we are going to have random half-steps dropping too? So the first person, with highest DKP, gets their 522 item, then next week the Thunderforged 528 item drops; what happens? It's not really fair to charge the first person full DKP again. Charge him an upgrade fee? Someone who doesn't have a 522 items needs to pay full price + upgrade fee to get it?

What a freakin' hassle. I personally don't care about loot much at all, I'll get it when I get it. I've never horded DKP to hold out on a specific item; if someone drops and is an upgrade I say "Want" and if I have highest priority then I take it. But some people aren't like that, and all they are doing here is introducing more drama. Just keep the Valor Upgrade dudes in there if you want people to bump item levels.

They have a HIGHER CHANCE for TR gear to drop, but doesn't mean they don't drop in 10man, and you know how RNG works, A with higher chance doesn't always means he gets more than B who has a lower chance.

I would have against it if it is a fix ilvl increase, or get something that you just cannot get in 10man, but I am OK with them have a slightly higher chance, just like now it is more likely for them to get gear that isn't going to get DE'd or goes to OS (hence more actual upgrades).

Since 10man can still obtain these TR amours, I am OK with it.

I don´t think most people think it is a horrible idea as much as it is just a meaningless addition that will accomplish nothing. 25Ms already have a slight gear advantage ( average number of drops per player).. this will just add a tiny bit more onto that in a different mechanism. They could have just as easily bumped the rate of drops a little higher for 25M.. it would mean the same thing...25Ms will gear slightly faster than 10Ms

But neither change is going to keep 25Ms from falling apart. It is just a new, complex system added for no real benefit. Do you really think if a guild is on the verge of collapsing to 10M that the guildleader can say ´but the RNG chance you get a thunder-forged item is less in 10Ms´ and that will do anything to sway people?

You must be stupid. Stone guards means you have 1 less ability to deal with, less damage going out, and makes juggling the energy meters on the dogs much more simple.

In his defense.. stone guard WAS easier in 25 than 10 until they hotfixed it a couple of weeks later.

What makes 25 probably easier than 25, is that it gives you tons of versatility. I remember when my guild was working on Nefarian 25 man, I went protection so we could have an extra raid cooldown for crackles. In 10 man swapping an extra healer has a lot more impact than on 25 on your dps, same goes for extra tanks.. not counting the many more raid cooldowns, 3 battle rez.. and obviously, you nerf the encounters faster since you get more gear faster.

While the only thing that would make 10 man easier is the fact there are less people to manage.

But obviously system is not perfect, so we have fights where 10 is easier and some where 25 is easier right now.

Not liking that LFR is 502 compared to the 496 regular mode gear thats out right now.

Why? If you can organize a raid, then do it and get the real gear. If you cannot, then just run LFR and get upgrades. If you cannot run regular raids, then you still have progression gear through LFR, and that is the goal.. all players can progress their gear.

LFR is 25 because of difficulty. It has nothing to do with the fact DPS queues would be 14 hours if LFR was 10 man.

Thats just a side effect, but good luck trying to carry 3 mouth breather DPS in a 10man thats 60% of your DPS having there thumbs up you know what. That same 3 dps in 25man LFR is only 17% of your raid. Sure it will hurt you but get serious here if you cant compensate for 3 slackers in the undertuned LFR you have more issues as well. But try to compensate for 60% of all dps spots being waste yeah thats the reason my friend.

Hate the pampering of the 25 man whine babies, you already get more loot drops as is that should be more than enough to keep you happy.

its litearlly 1 piece of loot more, the only thing it solves is rng, and even then it can be god awful considering class stacks. I've cleared Sha of Fear for literally a month and a half and last week was the first time a sword dropped, we have 5 dps warriors, a prot tank, and a pally tank, think about it. The nightmare is unfathomable. Oh shit I forgot about our two frost dks.

To be fair, the only people that actually need to put additional effort into 25 mans is the organizers. Since there is no way to actually identify them (fairly) in-game, everyone who lumps themselves into that size raid group will be given an equal RNG based chance for better gear. I find this amusing because;
1- 25 man players are not necessarily better than any other player, they just raid in that size group.
2- The system still doesn't reward the TRUE heroes of 25 man raids, the Guild officers that organize and deal with the drama that that size group must sadly be a victim of.

But, like I said, no way to really give these people true recognition without the mindless dps that fills the spots getting all hot and bothered. Really, better to not offer any incentive at all and just let the raid size dwindle down to 15 or 10.

Yeah, my first thought was "Our poor, poor DKP system." We already have a bad time dealing with 489 vs 496 vs 502 vs 509. We have our raid members pay for each item slot once, per difficulty. So if I get a 489 helm out of MV and pay DKP for it, then I can get a 496 helm out of HoF for "free" assuming there isn't someone else paying for it. So yeah, this can lead to people "holding out" and not taking upgrades because the want first-shot at that 496 "real upgrade" and not the interim piece.

Now we are going to have random half-steps dropping too? So the first person, with highest DKP, gets their 522 item, then next week the Thunderforged 528 item drops; what happens? It's not really fair to charge the first person full DKP again. Charge him an upgrade fee? Someone who doesn't have a 522 items needs to pay full price + upgrade fee to get it?

What a freakin' hassle. I personally don't care about loot much at all, I'll get it when I get it. I've never horded DKP to hold out on a specific item; if someone drops and is an upgrade I say "Want" and if I have highest priority then I take it. But some people aren't like that, and all they are doing here is introducing more drama. Just keep the Valor Upgrade dudes in there if you want people to bump item levels.

That was one of my thoughts also. The real difficulty with 25Ms is organization. With this change, they are adding a ton of annoyance on the loot distribution of the guild... ie.. the raid-leaders are now going to have even MORE of a headache.

I guess it's nice to see them making an effort for 25mans but I agree with alot here in that we really don't need more ilvls per tier of pve gear. Going to be 5 levels of a tier now? LFR, Normal, Normal-Thunderforged, Heroic, Heroic-Thunderforged. That's a little bananas. Personally I always enjoyed the BC model of raiding with some 10man raids and some 25man raids but I understand why it's different now.

How do you think 10 mans started? Pandering to crybabies who have dinosaur computers or a million and one excuses why they don't like 25 man raiding aka "i just want purples!"

Actually it was because the majority of people never got to see raid content beyond the first few bosses in a tier because they were in a small guild, or their guild just couldn't handle the logistics of 25 man raid organizing, and people wanted more small group content. Blizzard's solution was to make 10 and 25 man versions of each raid, and it was a good idea, except at first 10 main raiding was not at all rewarding. Then they made 10s and 25s drop the same gear, which probably wasn't the best idea because 25m raiding doesn't offer enough to make it worth doing for a lot of people. At points in time both groups of raiders have been correct in being unhappy with the situation.

I'm not sure this latest idea will "fix" the problem, but we'll just have to see.